The passionate Eustacia Vye feels herself imprisoned in the wild, isolated Egdon Heath ("`Tis my cross...and will be my death"), and although she longs for a love that will free her from it, her marriage only serves to trap her deeper within it.

Her husband, Clem Yeobright, is the native of the novel's title, returned from Paris with a scheme for educating the heath-folk.

Though Hardy's story is one of fatally tangled relationships, the greatest effect upon the reader is made by Egdon Heath itself: "The storm was its lover, and the wind its friend".

This edition, retains the text of the novel's first edition, without the later changes that substantially altered Hardy's original intentions.

It is therefore possible for modern readers to share the experience of those who read the story when it appeared in 1878.